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UnknowingFool writes "After reports of update problems including bricking of some devices, Microsoft has pulled the 8.1 update for RT from their store while they investigate. 'Microsoft is investigating a situation affecting a limited number of users updating their Windows RT devices to Windows RT 8.1. As a result, we have temporarily removed the Windows RT 8.1 update from the Windows Store. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience. We will provide updates as they become available.' While update problems are not new to software, could this be a consequence of Microsoft not releasing 8.1 RTM to developers? Developers may have experienced problems earlier and alerted Microsoft before it went live."

The only problem with the Surface Pro is price - it's a fine tablet and actually has software, since it's easy to port normal Windows stuff. It's the RT that has the limited system library, and so only new apps.

Yeah, the price is too high. Drop that by 1/3 and it would be price competitive, drop it by 40% and they would sell every one they could make.It is a really well thought out tablet. A bit Too heavy. Battery life needs improvement. But I still like it, Windows 8(.1) and all.

Its faster than my 10 inch Android tablet, but a lot easier to adapt to business use because of software compatibility.This is where RT fails.

Microsoft is ready to pour $100B into mobile if they can find in that a path to success by doing so. But there is no such path. The truth is that we moved the party and don't want them here. How rich they are is not relevant. They are rude, obnoxious and not fun. We moved the party to get away from them.

Go try one out at a nearby Mall or something, instead of beating me up.I was a doubter too. Played with one at the Microsoft Keosk for 15 minutes. They even let me install software (Visual Studio).I ran some tests, and slapped down my credit card. I never even looked at the RT units.You can dis this machine just because its windows (if that't your game), But as a Windows machine, its a pretty sweet package.Its a full 64bit WinTel machine.

OK, if you've been reading/. more than a few weeks you know I'm not a Microsoft fan. I'm not their defender generally. But Ivy Bridge wasn't available when the Surface Pro was being designed or launched. This one specific thing is not their fault.

They get no pass from me on the horrid UI, the update debacle on their own device, the marketing that will stand for all time as how not to do it, not doing a wide beta and all that. But I cannot blame them for not including components that were not available. We expect ridiculously swift time to market, but it is unfair to demand time travel.

They did add quick access to the camera without unlocking the tablet. That had me indignant as hell when I touched the screen to unlock and saw me staring back at me with a surprised look on both our faces.

Then I realized my fingers had accidentally swiped the wrong direction. Turned that off.

How about this? No one wants to use an RT, even to test it. Sure it gets tested by QA people, but no one wants to use it all day every day, trying to get useful work done. So an update is sent out the door with little to no real world testing.

I have. It reminded me a lot of my first generation iPad when I got it. Potential maybe, but stifled by lack of non-basic apps that people want to use. Apple got through that stage by being the only serious players in the market. MS is going up against two deeply-entrenched and not-deeply-retarded adversaries, I don't see it working out as smoothly.

This is something I've argued for years, every MSFT victory? Was preceded by "and then the other guy did something REALLY dumb", from the owner of CP/M blowing off IBM to go flying to BeOS choosing to start out on an ultra nice AT&T "Hobbit" CPU it has ALWAYS been "and then the other guy did something REALLY dumb. What happens when the other guy doesn't politely shoot themselves in the face? Zune, Kin,Sidekick, WinRT, one bad move after another.

How about this? No one wants to use an RT, even to test it. Sure it gets tested by QA people, but no one wants to use it all day every day, trying to get useful work done. So an update is sent out the door with little to no real world testing.

RT is clearly a brand of dog food no dog wants to eat.

You sound like a blind Microsoft hater. If nobody used RT it wouldn't matter if 8.1 were buggy or not.

More likely two of the RT users had problems with 8.1 and MS decided to pull it before the third user got around to upgrading too.

MS is putting their flagship on the line for the belief that what's a little odd now will grow on people. And from my perspective, there's a strange appeal to a Windows operating system like RT. It's impervious to viruses, its fast, its simple, and you can't break it. Its everything a tablet OS should be. So while we're talking about putting Windows 8.1 Pro on all the tablets, we're missing the point. People fight with their computers - that's always to be expected. They don't have the patience to fight wit

I'm sorry, I was excessively brief so as to be approachable while still somewhat informative.

Balmer had his shitfit several years ago, as I'd pointed out. Around that same time, WinPhone went from being a second class citizen to being a major focus again. More recently, Microsoft flat out bought Nokia. That better?

Personally, I think MS bought Nokia in order to continue the current WinPho or Bust plan, which seems to be trending strongly towards "or Bust". The Nokia stockholders seemed not to care as long a

Having "one of those locked down bios" sorry I mean boards with UEFI, [msi.com] and being able to load 'nix, bsd and windows without a problem, I'm guess mine is broken. I will say though, being able to mess around with the UEFI inside windows itself is damned nice. I haven't found anything 'nix wise that will allow the same support, but if someone knows something I'd be interested in it.

You seem to be confusing UEFI and SecureBoot. UEFI itself is fine and not a problem and SecureBoot is okay if it can be disabled, however, Microsoft have dictated that Arm based Windows 8 devices cannot allow the SecureBoot to be disabled.

Serves them right. Microsoft should have learn already that the way to release stuff is to put a BETA label in it, like Google does with everything else. Service unavailable? BETA! Unexpected error? BETA! Lost all your data? BETA!

Beta is a blanket term for "we can charge for this but if it breaks it's not our fault".

"Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisements said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighborhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to

Not a clue about the proper labelling. But my doctor has been calling me a chimera for a year now, and seemed quite pleased by it (any trace of my old bone marrow would mean that they did not cure my cancer - the fact that I'm showing 100% chimerism is the best possible result).

You got me interested since it seems I'm wrong. Apparently my definition came from this [wikipedia.org]

The Chimera (/kÉËmÉÉ(TM)rÉ(TM)/ or/kaÉËmÉÉ(TM)rÉ(TM)/, also Chimaera, ChimÃ¦ra; Greek: ÎÎÎ¼Î±ÎÏÎ± ChÃmaira) was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of three animals â" a lion, a snake and a goat. Usually depicted as a lion, wi

Ordinary users can't revive the dead tablet, even if it only fails to load the touchscreen drivers. Tablet becomes the photo frame, showing the log in screen. Unless other drivers failed as well, or tablet is asking to navigate to skydrive to get the bitlocker key, but you don't have any other computer. Besides, the on-screen keyboard doesn't function, so you can't enter it.

Yes, you can get over some problems with Windows 8 tablet if you have USB hub, flash drive, ISO image of Windows 8, USB keyboard and mouse... But I am talking about ordinary users, not geeks.

In the EU if that happens then the shop that sold it to you is responsible for fixing it under warranty. The minimum warranty period on electronics is two years, although some countries offer you much longer (in the UK tablets are typically five to six years).

So in that sense it isn't really bricked because even the most clueless user has a legal right to get it fixed for free under warranty. It really does have to be for free as well, e.g. if you bought it online the shop has to pay return postage costs.

There are a ton of people complaining about things no longer working after the 8.1 'upgrade'. Thank God I run a nice, reliable operating system like Linux instead of this crap that breaks machines every time you try to upgrade.

Well, I run Linux as well. But to say that Linux does not have this crap is actually an understatement. Linux these days does have its issues. I run Ubuntu and the 13.04, 12.10 upgrade was very painful. Even now on some machines I still run 12.04 as some software simply does not work.

Try other distros. I had problems galore as an Ubuntu user for my first 2 years with Linux, then finally tried distro-hopping and was shocked to find that overall they were just as easy to use (especially the apt/Synaptic-based ones) and a lot more stable.

Upgraded my laptop the day the update became available in the store...have only noticed two odd things so far:

VLC is dead. Crashes immediately, then gives error about failing to send an error report. Yay. Uninstalling and reinstalling made no difference. Double yay.

Pictures used for wallpaper, screensaver, login screens, etc changed after reboot. Bizarre, but easily fixed.I should note that I had to google how to change some of these back to original settings, as not all of these are changed from control panel. and the actualsetting I was looking for is hiding behind a GUI element that doesn't look clickable. That annoyed me more than anything else.

I should note that I had to google how to change some of these back to original settings, as not all of these are changed from control panel. and the actual
setting I was looking for is hiding behind a GUI element that doesn't look clickable. That annoyed me more than anything else.

I'd like to add my voice to this: What the hell are UI designers smoking these days? There used to be a time when user interfaces were very direct and to-the-point about what the user could and could not click to make things happen. Now we're seeing all these awful "flat" interfaces where it's nearly impossible to tell what can be interacted with and what's just there as part of the background!
The fact that Apple - who claim to be #1 in user interface design - seems to be leading this charge is mind-bog

I'd like to add my voice to this: What the hell are UI designers smoking these days? There used to be a time when user interfaces were very direct and to-the-point about what the user could and could not click to make things happen. Now we're seeing all these awful "flat" interfaces where it's nearly impossible to tell what can be interacted with and what's just there as part of the background! The fact that Apple - who claim to be #1 in user interface design - seems to be leading this charge is mind

I noticed the changed wallpapers too. However, my assigned screen saver was the same.

Here's what's worse. If you install W8.1 from its ISO file over the old activated and updated W8.0 with its Media Center addon (got it for free), then it asks you to enter a key, reactivate, changed settings back to defaults, lose my free Media Center addon offer, etc. Annoying. That should not happen if I am keeping my settings to upgrade from a W8.1 ISO file!

...Wednesday to be exact. A Wholesaler had a drawing after a vendor event. Last year I won my iPad at the same event. I also own a Nexus 7, and was willing to give this Microsoft Tablet a go. At the very least it could be used as a HTPC lite or something. It's 1080P output via a Micro HDMI port was beautiful, and a full-size USB port was a bonus, as was the Micro SD slot. The lower-rez screen was a disappointment. After 24 hours and a concerted effort to find a use-case for it, I quickly grew to hate the th

While normally I would look at this, it seems that I had early access from the Windows 8.1 Preview that was loaded on my RT device for 2 months before I did a refresh back to Win8RT OS. The device got constant updates to keep it within striking distance of RTM. I am thinking that it was not the lack of "Windows 8.1 RTM" for a RT device that casued the issue.

Since reading your post, I'm now going to rename any "Caps Lock" button as the "CRAZY" button. Any post that has seemingly random sections of capitalisations always looks like it's been written by a strung-up meth-head.